


without navigation, without consideration

by nightwideopen



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety Attacks, Comfort/Angst, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Din Djarin Removes the Helmet, M/M, Post-Epiosde: s02e08 The Rescue, Sharing a Bed, Touch-Starved Din Djarin, featuring the ever elusive red scarf as a blindfold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:22:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28925745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightwideopen/pseuds/nightwideopen
Summary: After leaving Grogu with Luke, Din accidentally hitches a ride back to Tatooine.There, he runs into the Marshal.Literally.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 29
Kudos: 238





	without navigation, without consideration

**Author's Note:**

> hey look at that! my first star wars fic. apparently i am not immune to the gay space cowboys.

When Din stumbles back onto _Slave I_ with no place to go, he doesn't mean to hitch a ride all the way back to Tatooine. Whatever business Fennec and Fett have there certainly isn't for him, but they drop into the spaceport all the same. He'd wracked his brain throughout the entire journey, but couldn't think of a single rock in the whole galaxy that he might want to be dropped off on. With the most immediate threat to his safety taken care of, he’s now empty-handed and lost. There’s no child demanding his attention and care, no next stop for him. The only evidence that any of it had happened at all is the weight of the Darksaber hanging off of his belt and the gaping hole in his chest that Grogu’s presence had carved out of him. 

He wanders around Mos Eisley aimlessly after a less than savory farewell, refusing to acknowledge the sad eyes and apologetic mumbling, stalking off to find a cantina that’s willing to serve him food he won’t eat and drinks he won’t touch until he can come up with a plan, or at the very least a place to stay. 

But in his absent-minded grief, instead of stumbling into somewhere he stumbles into some _one_ and his hackles immediately go up. Din reaches for his blaster, fully prepared for a fight, and prepared to lose, at that, for all he’s worth at the moment. He had spent a good few hours on the ship angry, nearly shaking with it, until he’d succumbed to the defeated slump of his shoulders that weighs him down now. 

And he doesn't care, to be honest. No one needs him anymore. What does it matter?

But nothing happens except for a deep, sultry voice saying, “Woah there, excuse me. I didn’t see you— Mando?” And looking back at Din is the marshal of Mos Pelgo whom he’d slayed a dragon for those scarce few months ago.

Well, not _for._ But is there really any other way to put it?

And he’s still wearing that damned red scarf.

Din’s surprise must keep him silent for a beat too long because the marshal squints at him. 

“You are the same Mando, right? There can’t be that many of you coming ‘round these parts anymore.”

“Yes, sorry.” Din’s voice sounds hollow to his own ears, even through his helmet’s modulator. He holsters his blaster dumbly. “It’s Vanth, right?”

“That’s me. Though, we’re friends, aren’t we? You can call me Cobb.” He looks at Din curiously. His gaze is so sharp that Din feels as if he may as well be standing here with his helmet off for all the good it’s doing. Cobb then seems to realize that they’re having a stare off in the middle of a busy square in broad daylight with no intention of fighting. “Say, you wanna grab a drink and catch up? I was wondering what you’d been up to since you’d raced off all covered in dragon guts.”

The thought of anyone thinking about Din in any context other than wanting to kill him or wanting to _send_ someone to kill him throws him off enough that he nods without hesitation. He feels bad, almost guilty, for not sparing a thought for the marshal until now. To be fair to himself, he had a lot going on from the moment he’d left Mos Pelgo to about… yesterday. But to be fair to Cobb, there haven't been many people in between then and now who’d shown him a fraction of the kindness and understanding that he did in the short time they’d spent as a team. 

He follows Cobb into the nearest cantina, sliding into a booth across from him and awkwardly folding his hands in front of him. Cobb orders them both drinks, but he doesn't look like he expects Din to actually drink it, and easily falls into regaling Din with tales of what’s happened in Mos Pelgo—or, more accurately, Freetown—since his departure. He takes sporadic sips of his drink, gesturing loose and unbothered as he sits comfortably in his seat. He’s easy to be around, not pressing Din to say anything, though giving him plenty of opportunity to interject should he want to. It makes the nervous tension in Din’s shoulders let up a bit, and he finds himself not even half as anxious as he was when he’d first bumped into Cobb. He hasn’t done the small talk thing in a very long time, so he’s grateful. There’s nothing at stake here, just two friends getting a drink, catching up, just like Cobb had said. 

Slowly and carefully so as not to spook _himself_ , Din reaches for the straw that the waitress left at their table and slips it into the glass in front of him. He maneuvers it around a little bit so that he can finally take a sip of his own drink. It’s a little warm now, but it’s good and settles pleasantly in his stomach.

Cobb finishes up his few small stories with a wistful smile. 

“I’m telling you, had you not come along things wouldn’t be going half as good as they are now. You made the whole damn town safer and you nearly died doing it. I’m glad I’ve got the chance to thank you properly, now. So, thank you.”

“It was no bother. We had a deal.”

“Sure, deal’s a deal but sacrificing yourself for a bunch of strangers? That’s just about heroic.”

“Oh, no.” Heroism isn’t a thing that Mandalorians _do_ . Din had asked before, as a child, what the Mando’a word for _hero_ is, but there _isn’t one_. “I can’t accept that. I did what I had—”

Mayfeld’s voice rings in his head at that and everything comes rushing back loud and in color. Din hears himself make a small sound behind his helmet, an involuntary gasp, and he hates it. He hates how everything has spun out of his control, most of all his own grasp on his emotions. The kid had softened something inside of him that he hadn’t realized had hardened over the years, something he didn’t know needed fixing and now here he is, all cracked and shattered once more.

Though, this time it might not be salvageable. 

The marshal’s hearing is better than Din might’ve guessed, because he looks like he’s cottoned on to Din’s harsh breathing even over the ruckus of the crowded cantina. 

“You alright there? Did I say something I shouldn’t have? I’m sorry, I’m still not all up to speed on your Mandalorian customs.”

Din shakes his head. “It’s okay. It’s— I just—” His mouth is running away from him, wanting to tell Cobb _everything._ The words hang on the tip of his tongue: _I miss the kid. I miss him so bad it’s tearing me up in a way I didn’t think possible. I thought I was going to be fine. I did what I had to do. I did what I had to. I—_ “I did what I had to do. Your village is safe. The kid’s safe. Everyone’s alright.”

Cobb’s hands fall off of his near empty glass, spreading flat on the table. His face falls with them, a frown twisting up his handsome face in a way that it shouldn’t be. The near permanent smirk on his lips that was there when he took off his helmet that first time all those months ago, the one that followed as he told Din his story, the one that stayed there up until their brief and uneventful farewell; That had belonged there. But _this_. Din’s upsetting him and it’s just another thing that makes his stomach clenchunpleasantly. 

“Yeah,” Cobb says, impossibly soft, “But are _you?”_

Din doesn’t know if it’s the tone of his voice or the weight of the question, but something inside him wells up and snaps. He shakes his head, and his hands follow on their own, rattling his glass and sloshing the liquid inside. He feels eyes on him, he knows people are watching. Suddenly his beskar shell isn’t enough to make him feel safe and he feels like he’s suffocating under Cobb’s worried gaze and the judgemental eyes of the other bar patrons. 

Big bad Mandalorian, nothing but a quaking excuse for a man. He’s only human, after all. And that’s his fatal flaw.

“Woah, easy there partner.” 

He takes the glass from Din’s shaking fingers and sets it gently on the table. Then he looks around the cantina, decides on something, and grabs Din’s hand in his. It doesn’t stop the shaking, but Din can feel the warmth of him even through his gloves. He must’ve absorbed it from the suns. He must be this warm all the time.

“C’mon,” Cobb says urgently and adjusts his grip to pull Din out of his seat by one of his vambraces, “Let’s get you out of here. It’s gonna be alright, come on.”

Din obeys without meaning to, his feet dragging and his knees barely doing their job to keep him upright. The only thing grounding him is Cobb’s steady grip that’s squeezing his beskar against the sleeve of his flight suit and into the skin of his arm. 

“Where are we going?” Din asks shakily as they step out into the harsh sunlight of midday. His visor dims it enough but it’s still bright, still two suns beaming down on them in the desert at their peak. 

Cobb pulls him out of the cantina and back into the square, but they stop in the gap between two buildings, carefully out of the way of passersby this time. If nothing else, the relatively open air is less stifling, and gives Din an opportunity to get his harsh breathing under control. The marshal doesn't speak, not for a long moment, not until Din has calmed down enough to speak first. 

“Thank you.”

Then he looks at Din carefully, still with that stare that suggests he might be able to see past the visor, straight into Din’s aching eyes.

“Do you have anyplace to stay?”

Din shakes his head. He hadn’t gotten a chance to look for lodging. He hadn't gotten a change to so much of anything. 

“Not yet.”

“I have a spare room,” Cobb says simply.

It’s not a question, or even a suggestion, it’s just a simple fact to disguise an invitation. Or maybe a plea. He seems to remember his iron grip on Din’s arm and lets him go, gently. Slowly. Like he doesn’t want to. 

There’s too much happening, and Din has nothing and nowhere. 

“Okay.”

Cobb seems to read between the lines of Din's following silence and his still-subsiding shakes, jerking his head in the direction of the square before he starts walking. Din follows until they get to that same speeder, with the giant engine of a dismantled podracer. Or maybe destroyed. He probably found it lost in the dunes of Mos Espa. Din wishes he’d asked. Before. It kicks to life with a sputter and a groan, and Cobb swings one leg over it. He looks back at Din expectantly, softly, and tilts his head in invitation. Din finds his feet moving without his permission. 

He settles on the speeder, careful to leave a bit of space between them and keep his hands to himself.

“Ready?”

Din nods wordlessly, but then remembers Cobb can't see him. 

“Ready.”

“Well, hang on then. We don't want you falling off the moment we crest over a dune.”

Din feels as though _everyone_ is watching them. 

Nonetheless, he reaches out, muscling past his stuttering movements, and fists his gloved fingers into the sides of Cobb's shirt. The kick of the speeder pulling away nearly has him tumbling backwards, forcing him to tighten his grip. He imagines that Cobb’s shirt would be soft under his fingers. It’s a soft, thin, nearly see through bit of blue fabric, not unlike the one he was wearing the last time Din saw him. It would probably slip right through Din’s fingers, easy as silk. 

Cobb doesn’t try to say anything as they speed through the desert, over the hills and through the Dune Sea at a speed faster than Din usually travels. They make it to Mos Pelgo just as the last of the second sun dips below the horizon and this side of Tatooine falls dark and cold. Cobb parks the speeder just in front of his house, swinging off just as easily as he had climbed on and accidentally takes Din’s iron grip with him. Din releases his fingers, embarrassed, but if Cobb notices, he doesn’t mention it, just nods his head once more in the direction of his house and makes his way up the porch for Din to follow. 

“Room’s are downstairs,” he says quietly once they're inside with the door firmly shut. Everything’s quiet in here, muffled by the clay packed into the sand. There’s a staircase leading further underground, and Din realizes that the house is deceptively small from the outside. “Help yourself to the ‘fresher,” Cobb continues, “And I can lend you some clothes if you wanna get comfy. Dunno how strict your armor rules are around strangers.”

The soft consideration and thought that went into that single sentence tugs at Din in a hundred horrible ways. He couldn’t list them if you asked, but he feels every one of them right inside his chest and it knocks the wind out of him right there in Cobb Vanth’s front hall. 

Din’s just a broken man in a suit of armor that he no longer feels worthy of, and he doesn’t know what to do with that. 

So he just gives Cobb a nod and stumbles down the stairs, easily locating the refresher and very carefully avoiding the mirror. Armor on or not, he’s not sure he’s ready to accept the fact that he’s still existing in whatever state he’s found himself in. Childless, Creed-less, weapon-less, except for the blasted Darksaber still hanging off his belt. He wants to bury it in the sand of this forsaken desert planet and never have to see it again. He wants to wash his hands clean of it and everything that’s happened in the past year.

Din wants to go back to being the nameless, faceless Mandalorian that he’d made of himself and stop feeling as if the whole world is watching him, ready to see him _really_ break from the weight of everything he’s lost.

He doesn’t actually use the facilities, just turns on the sonic shower and stands there for long enough to make it seem like he is. After what feels like a reasonable time, he clatters around to hopefully mimic the sounds of putting his armor back on and steps out. 

There are two open doors down the hall. Din slowly creeps past the first one, sees Cobb sitting on the edge of the bed undoing his boot laces, and hurries past towards the second one. He knows Cobb saw him, but he doesn’t know if he’s going to follow, so Din shuts the door either way. 

True to his word, Cobb has laid out a shirt and pants almost identical to the ones he’s wearing save for the colors. And Din knows he shouldn’t, he _shouldn’t_. He shouldn’t take his armor off and let his guard down here in the home of a man he met once. A man who was a thief— No. A man who did what he had to to survive. A man who protected a people that owed him nothing, made a deal with a strange man, kept his word, and carried on doing what he believed was right no matter the danger it put him in. 

A man who gave himself purpose by showing unconditional kindnesses, by changing and learning and… being the type of person that took home a lost, shaken Mandalorian whose name he didn’t even know.

So Din takes off his gloves and just holds the shirt in his hands to start with. And it _is_ soft, just like he’d imagined. And now that it’s on his fingertips he can’t stop thinking about what it would feel like against his skin instead of the rough itch of his flight suit that could probably do with a wash. Or two.

He changes quickly, or as quickly as he can without removing his helmet in fear that the bedroom door could open at any moment. Pulling the shirt over his helmet doesn’t distort the fabric as much as he thought it would, and it feels so light on him, like he’s barely wearing anything at all. He pulls off the rest of his beskar, the rest of his flight suit, his boots and his socks and replaces it all with the pants and fresh socks that Cobb left for him. He doesn’t own anything half as soft and worn as this, and he feels silly for being moved by it. 

Because Cobb _lives_ here, in this little house in the sand. It’s a place full of trinkets and things and cups that get washed and reused. It’s a place with a toothbrush and a razor next to the sink and soft sheets and soft clothes and it’s a place to come back to at the end of the day. It’s a _home_ . The closest thing to home that Din ever has ever gotten since he lived at the covert was hanging the child’s hammock above his bed on the _Crest_. And even that is gone now. 

Din is a man that wants to go home, without one to go to. Not the one he was born on, not the one he was adopted into, not the one he made for himself. 

He’s just… adrift.

A knock on the door startles him out of his melancholy, out of staring at his socked feet on the floor and resolutely avoiding looking at the pile of shiny beskar that’s judging him from the bed.

“You got your head on, Mando? Can I come in?”

In lieu of words, which seem to fail him, he crosses the room and opens the door for Cobb, stepping aside to invite him in. 

“Find everything okay? Looks like those fit you alright, good. Was worried they might be a bit of a tight fit, but I guess your armor makes you look bigger than you are.”

Din doesn’t know what to say.

“Sorry,” Cobb says.

“No. It’s okay.” He sounds like a stranger to himself. “Um. Come sit, I— I’ll tell you what happened. With the kid. And everything else.”

Din sits as far away from the armor as he can get. Cobb notices, with his sharp eyes that never miss a thing, and tries to do the same. He just ends up sitting close enough to Din that their knees bump. He doesn’t look like he minds, and Din isn’t going to say anything about it either. He keeps his leg as still as possible, and tries to focus on the story instead, tries to remember where he’d left Cobb’s part in it and tries to put into words just exactly what’s happened since he got swallowed up and spit out by a krayt dragon.

It takes a while to get through, feels like an eternity. Din trips over his words, stutters over certain parts. His voice drifts in and out, getting so quiet that he’s sure Cobb isn’t able to hear him at some points. But he manages it, telling Cobb about the kid’s powers, the other Mandalorians, the stormtroopers that saw his face, the Jedi that took the only thing he had left in the galaxy besides his armor. He glosses over the details of the Darksaber, though he stares hard enough at it that even with his helmet on, Cobb follows his gaze to where it sits on the bed. It looks relatively harmless with the blade sheathed; it just looks like a hunk of metal. And yet he's lucky to have walked away with it, alive. 

Cobb’s knee jerks against his, trying to get Din’s attention. When Din looks up he’s met with just about the saddest look he’s ever seen. 

Cobb says, “I’m sorry all that happened. I figured it was something, when you didn't have the kid with you. But I didn't know it was all… that.” And it sounds like he really means it. 

Din doesn’t know what to do with that.

“My name is Din Djarin,” he blurts out.

“Oh.” Cobb looks taken aback but he recovers quickly. “That’s nice. Suits you, if I do say so myself.”

He couldn’t possibly know that, but it’s nice to hear all the same. 

“I don’t think I’m a Mandalorian anymore. Now I’m just him. Just Din Djarin.”

“Aw, don’t say that. Just because they saw your face—”

“It’s not just that, though. The way Bo-Katan tells it, I was never _really_ Mandalorian. Not by blood, barely by adoption. I’m just some kid who was raised in a cult and then _still_ went against my Creed—the only thing I’ve ever believed in. All for nothing. ‘Cause I don’t even have the kid anymore.”

“Well,” Cobb knocks Din with his knee again and the point of contact is the only thing keeping him from shattering into a million pieces, “The way _you_ tell it, Bo-Katan never said you _weren’t_ Mandalorian. You’re just a different _kind_ of Mandalorian. It’s not what you were born as right? It's just what you believe. Anyone can be a Mando, right?”

Din nods solemnly, trying to will himself to agree. 

“Exactly,” Cobb continues, “And if you’ve got the same core values as the rest of the Mandos out there, who cares which way you go about it? And like you said, you did what you had to do to save your kid. He’s safe now, thanks to you. The galaxy’s just about gone belly up, so that’s really all you can really ask for these days. 

“So, the way I see it, you can either carry on being Mandalorian in whatever way you feel is right, or you can carry on being ‘just Din Djarin.’ Or both. Or neither. Whatever you choose, you’re still welcome here, with me and in this town.”

Din doesn’t move, doesn't breathe. He stays very still and very focused on the warmth of Cobb’s knee against his and surety of his words in Din’s ears. But the thing is, no matter what Cobb says, Din is always gonna feel as though this is the moment his world got turned upside down. He can’t take it back, all the ways he broke the very Creed he’d so harshly measured himself against for more than half his life. But he also can’t dwell on it, he can’t sit here broken and defeated and floundering, hoping that someone will come along with all the right answers. He's not even sure what he wants to hear at this point. 

The only thing he can do, sitting next to this hopelessly kind man, is go forward.

So Din reaches up with shaking hands, _visibly_ shaking hands, to begin to lift his helmet off. He carefully keeps his gaze on Cobb’s face for as long as he can, gauging his reaction. What he sees is wide eyed panic and Cobb reaching out to grab Din’s hands where they’re holding his helmet. 

“Wait, no, _stop._ ”

And Cobb shoves Din’s helmet securely back onto his head.

“Hey,” Cobb says quietly, “What’re you doing?”

He doesn’t move his hands. Din shrugs helplessly. 

“I’m— I can’t keep it on. I… I broke it. I—”

“If you’re gonna take it off because you think you don’t deserve to be Mandalorian anymore, then that’s not a good reason. You’re gonna regret it. This isn’t a life or death situation, Din. This is just us sitting in a room. And you’ve never taken it off for anything less than life or death, right?”

“I-I did when the kid—”

Cobb shakes his head. “You don’t know when you’re gonna see him again. You wanted him to see you. And my whole… That whole speech. You can either go on as you or as a Mando. I didn’t mean… If you’re not ready— I’m getting this all wrong. I’m sorry.”

Din lets out a shaky breath, his hands still fluttering uncontrollably under Cobb’s grasp of his helmet. 

“Don’t be sorry. You can’t possibly know.”

“No, I don’t know. Not really. But I get it. I get wanting to-to be the old version of yourself before everything went to hell. That’s impossible. I’ve learned that the hard way. But it’s possible to rebuild yourself, to be a better version. You can’t stop believing in your Creed and you can’t undo breaking it. But you don’t have to stop being Mandalorian the way you've always been because of that. Okay?”

Din nods. 

Cobb doesn’t say anything either, just nods back, his expression begging Din to hear his words and believe them. Slowly, Din releases his hold on his helmet and their hands slip down together. Cobb doesn’t let go of Din’s hands, as if afraid he’s going to try to show his face again.

“If you ever wanna take your helmet off around me, it’s gonna be because you want to, not to punish yourself, okay?”

The scariest thing, Din thinks, is that he can imagine himself wanting to. He wants Cobb to see him for real, even if it already feels like he can see right through him. 

“Thank you.”

Cobb’s worried look turns into a swift smile, then, his eyes gleaming. It slows Din’s heartbeat, loosens the knot in his chest. He's spent so much time and energy today fretting over things he can't change and he's _exhausted_. As the anxiety subsides, he feels the crash, and all he wants to do is curl up in the sheets and sleep. Forget. Put this off for just a little bit longer. 

“No problem. And I’m just down the hall if you need me. Rest easy, now, alright?”

Din hears him but he’s not really listening, everything that Cobb has said swirling around in his head. He’s barely aware of it when Cobb moves to stand up and Din’s hand shoots out, grabbing hold of his wrist.

“Will you stay?”

Din goes red in the face, ever grateful for the cover of his helmet. But Cobb can’t hide his expression when his mouth falls open and his eyes go wide.

“For a while longer? Or…”

“To sleep. Just to sleep. I—” Din feels silly now. “If that’s okay.”

But Cobb nods. “If-If you want,” he stutters. “I suppose the bed’s plenty big enough.” Cobb sits back down where he was. “Do you want me to help you move your…” He gestures vaguely to the pile of beskar behind them. 

“Please. If you don’t mind.”

Together they relocate Din’s armor, piece by piece, to the chest of drawers across from the bed. 

It feels like blasphemy. 

But then so does pulling back the covers to crawl into the bed, and having Cobb do the same. So does reaching a hand out between them, trying to find Cobb’s fingers with his and holding on tight when he does.

“Thank you for everything. I really mean that. You’re a good man.” 

Din assumes that the sound of the pillow rustling beside him is Cobb shaking his head. He’s afraid to turn to look at him, afraid that Cobb will be looking back, and he’s already been seen enough tonight.

“I'm not really. I’ve done a lot of bad things. Had a lot of bad things done to me. I just try to balance it out sometimes. Can't have your whole life be bad things, you know?” 

Din knows it's an excuse, deflection from whatever he really thinks of himself. He supposes that neither of them are used to letting their guard down, and now Din sort of wishes he hadn’t so easily.

But he doesn’t regret it. On this whole planet, he’s glad that Cobb is the one he ran into.

“You gonna sleep with that on?”

It wouldn’t be the first or even the hundredth time. “We don’t know which one of us is gonna wake up first.”

Cobb hums. “True enough. But what if I—” He cuts himself off to sit up, and that grabs Din’s attention enough that he has to turn his head and look. He looks over just in time to see Cobb untying the scarf from around his neck and pulling it up over his eyes. He ties it behind his head, adjusts it so that it covers his eyebrows and half his nose. “That worked a charm, I can’t see a damn thing.”

Din chuckles. “Am I supposed to just take your word for it?” 

Cobb shrugs. And a part of Din wants to wave a hand in front of his face to make sure he can't see, but he decides that trust given is trust earned.

“I suppose you are.”

And somehow that’s enough.

So Din takes his helmet off, once again in the presence of a near stranger. No one’s life is on the line, no one’s going away and not coming back. He’s no longer a foundling, unable to keep his helmet on for more than a few hours at a time. He’s just Din Djarin, doing this because he wants to, bending broken rules for a man he hardly knows.

He sets his helmet gently on the floor next to the bed, and the beskar hitting the ground gives a little _ping_ that makes Din inhale sharply. It also alerts Cobb to the fact that he could easily remove the flimsy material around his eyes and finally see exactly what the mysterious Mandalorian looks like under all that bulky armor.

But he doesn’t, just stays still and asks, “Am I allowed to ask what you look like? Or am I not allowed to imagine it, either? Like your hair and-and your eyes.”

Din doesn’t know anymore. He finds that he doesn’t really care, either. “Both brown.”

“Wow.” Cobb starts smiling. “You— Your voice is nice. Without the... I like it.”

It seems so arbitrary in the grand scheme of the moment, but it still makes Din’s stomach flip-flop. 

“Thank you.”

A silence descends on them and it weighs on Din enough that he has to retreat back under the covers. He pulls them up to his ears so that only his eyes are peeking out from under them. Cobb must hear him, because he does the same, lying on his back, not giving any evidence that he can see Din or he’s trying to. Din’s heart pounds against his ribcage anyway.

“You’ve been on your own for a while, haven’t you.”

It’s not a question, but Din says _yes_ anyway.

“You’re a good man, too. I won’t call you a hero again, but you’re a good person. What you did for us, and for the kid, I can’t even imagine all the good you’ve done elsewhere. Bounty hunter or not, you’re much more than that.”

“I wasn’t,” Din insists. “Not for a long time. Not before the kid.”

Before the kid he was brutal and ruthless, never hesitating to kill when necessary. He supposes he’s still like that, but he’s also aware that now, after _everything_ , he feels less drawn to be who he was before.

“Well, you are now. That’s all that matters.”

Din reaches out between them again, doesn’t find Cobb’s fingers again but his own bump into the soft material of Cobb’s shirt. He tangles his fingers in it until he’s pressing his knuckles into the skin at Cobb’s waist that gives, just a little bit, and has Cobb grabbing Din’s fingers with his own. 

Din tugs, wordlessly begging for _something_. He doesn’t know what. 

But even blind, Cobb goes easily, scooting sideways until his shoulder bumps into Din’s nose and he can pull Din’s arm across his stomach. 

Cobb’s voice is feather light when he says, “It's alright.”

And Din didn’t realize how cold he’d been until now.


End file.
